Gerwin Kronfeld and his family, wife Rosalia and children Joseph, 4, and Florentine, 2, have been watching the devastation unfold on TV.
By Melissa Meehan
TALES of tragedy from the Samoan tsunami have rocked the world, but for one Dandenong family the images are only too real.
When Gerwin Kronfeld and his wife Rosalia woke last Wednesday to news of the tsunami they raced to call their family members.
“I tried to call my family in Apia but the phone lines were dead,” he said.
“So I spent the whole day not knowing whether they were alive.”
At 2am the next day (Melbourne time), Mr Kronfeld finally got in touch with his sister, Angie.
“She said not to worry and that our family were fine,” he said. “It was very sad.”
Since news of the tsunami reached Australia, the Kronfeld family have been watching the devastation unfold – a large part of their day spent watching television news bulletins.
The heart-wrenching images of the devastation, and how he feels about it, is hard to describe for Mr Kronfeld.
“It’s very hard to explain, the villages I know, the ones I visit, are beautiful but now it is like a war zone,” he said.
“I’m very lucky my family survived.”
He holds on tightly to the print-out of an email sent by his sister on Friday.
“Thanks for your prayers and concern about us,” it says.
She describes the condition of Samoa’s eastern side as “devastating”.
“Villages and whole beach resorts are totally wiped out, debris from what used to be homes split like matchsticks and rental cars are wrapped around tree trunks – there are even huge trees ‘planted’ inside houses,” the email says.
She then goes on to tell her husband which people have survived or perished, as well as some amazing stories of survival and heartache.
One woman, she describes, went to work the morning of the tsunami, leaving her three children with her mother.
One of her boys lost his arm and her mother could only be identified by the wedding ring she was wearing.
Mr Kronfeld says that, sadly, her story is not isolated.
“We are lucky that everything is OK in Apia,” he said.
“But many did not have the same experience.
“To have an earthquake of that significance and then a smaller one just two days after – it is devastating.”
He said that many people would have been saved after two practice evacuations to higher ground were organised last year.
“People would have known to head to higher land because of that,” he said.
Mr Kronfeld is the director and founder of Samoa FM Radio 97.7.
He says the Samoan community has pulled together in Victoria and called on them to get together on Saturday night to raise money for the rebuilding efforts. Tune in tonight (Thursday) from 9pm for more information.
